an Augmented Reality Resource

Menu

News

Written by Ryder Windham of Star Wars novelization fame, Scraper: The Rise of Cifer is already out on bookshelves or, more accurately, Kindle reading lists. It’s the prequel novel to not one, but rather an entire series of upcoming Scraper VR games, headed by the budding Labrodex Studios out of Jericho, NY. The story of

The Canadian university announces plans for new medical training center composed entirely of VR simulations. Queen’s University will be partnering with SimforHealth, a European company experienced in developeding VR software, and HTC to create an 8,000 square foot clinical simulation space that will train prospective doctors and study the impact of VR on education in

The lab and its hands-on workshops are kicking off at the Bronx Academy of Letters, where attendees can get lessons in artificial intelligence, coding, and robotics. And the lab will make stops at schools and other education institutions through December 15 (including stops planned in Oakland, California).

Intel’s Tech Learning Lab tour is a multi-city educational effort that will bring innovative teaching methods to educators across the country. The aim is to use technology (like virtual reality) to help students prepare for college by developing fundamental career skills, such as communication, collaboration, self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and more.

The VR experiences include location-based edutainment; a virtual field trip to the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; and a robotics lab, chemistry lab, dissection lab, arts lab, and space lesson.

HTC’s Vive Focus standalone VR headset just become a much more interesting competitor to the Oculus Quest.

The company just revealed a pair of six degrees of freedom (6DOF) motion controllers that are compatible with its mobile VR headset at the World Conference on VR Industry in Nanchang, China today. You can see Vive China President Alvin Graylin using them to slash notes in Beat Saber on the headset right here.

According to Engadget, the system uses a new attachment that fits to the top of the Focus to track the controllers, which appear to have tracking rings looping above the user’s hands, much like what can be seen with the Touch controllers coming to Oculus Quest. For now the controllers are in dev kit mode and Graylin says the company is “Welcoming all VR devs to join the journey.” Developers can apply for a kit here and we’ve reached out to HTC to find out more information about when these controllers might launch to consumers.

Focus itself provides inside-out positional tracking, allowing you to move your head around in VR without the need for external sensors. When it launched in China last year, though, it only came with a 3DOF motion controller similar to what can be seen with Google’s Daydream View headset (though that’s also getting an experimental 6DOF solution). In theory, pairing the headset with these new controllers will give users the freedom to move around in VR much like they would with the PC-based HTC Vive, though we’re yet to go hands-on to test that quality of the tracking for ourselves.

The headset also runs on HTC’s brand new Vive Wave platform which, notably, can stream games from SteamVR. If this support extends to these controllers that could be a major feature for Vive Focus, one that we’re not yet sure will be included in Quest (which launches next spring for $499). It’s not confirmed if Beat Saber is being shown natively or over streaming but, again, we’ve asked. (Update: Graylin just confirmed to us that the demo shown is using VRidge streaming.)

Earlier this month HTC’s Joel Breton confirmed to us that Vive Focus was still on track for a launch in the west this year. Whether or not these controllers will now be a part of that launch remains to be seen.

The U.S. department store will begin installing VR stations in 90 stores to sell furniture to customers. This would be the largest VR roll-out in the history of retail. When Macy’s first opened their doors to the public in 1858 on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue in New York City, no one would

With the Gear VR’s launch in 2015, Samsung were technically the first company to release a modern-age consumer VR headset, and Gear VR is still the most owned VR headset on the market. In late 2017 they then launched a PC VR system, the Odyssey, the only ‘Windows Mixed Reality’ headset to use OLED panels and have lens separation adjustment.

Over the past year, there have been multiple hints from Samsung that their next step may be a standalone VR headset with AR capabilities- a “hybrid” so to speak.

In a recent interview with the Malaysian tech news outlet Lowyat.NET, the CEO of Samsung Electronics stated:

“Today, we are heavily looking into incorporating both VR and AR (Augmented Reality). We haven’t decided which route to go with this yet, but we’re working closely with our partners on this. I’ve tested a prototype headset that actually incorporates both VR and AR, and it really delivers a much better experience with that combination.”

This isn’t the first time Samsung officials have hinted at a future VR headset distinct from 3DoF Gear VR or PC-based Odyssey.

The Odyssey may be a stepping stone to a fully standalone Samsung VR headset.

At their annual developer conference in November of last year, a Samsung VP told the audience “We think the next mobile VR system would have inside-out positional tracking with 6DoF motion controllers.” He stated that this would be delivered with “global partnerships” that included Intel.

Then, in May of this year, a Samsung official told The Korea Times that they were working on “cordless and high-priced headsets supporting both VR and AR”, and interestingly then added that Microsoft had recently agreed to lower its royalties.

This may be the answer to a major question about a future Samsung standalone headset: what platform and store would it run? With the Gear VR, Samsung used Oculus’ mobile platform and store, however the relationship between these two companies is currently unclear. For example, Samsung even added Google Daydream support to their smartphones and are using Microsoft’s platform on PC. Then earlier this year, Oculus launched its own standalone in the Oculus Go and basically never mentioned the Gear VR at Oculus Connect 5.

Instead, Samsung could be making the first standalone Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headset (Windows Mixed Reality is currently a PC-only platform, similar to SteamVR). Samsung has not said whether this would use an x86 chip like a PC or an ARM based chip like a smartphone, however the mention of Intel as a partner last November may suggest the former. If this is the case, this may have been what prompted Intel to close their “Project Alloy”, which was a project to create a standalone x86 VR headset reference design for manufacturers to use. It would also make it compatible with existing WMR, rather than requiring developers to recompile for ARM. In fact, it could potentially even run apps built for minimum spec PCs with no changes at all.